Great Speeches by African Americans: Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, and Others [B0378]

2006 PB. Tracing the struggle for freedom and civil rights across two centuries, this anthology comprises speeches by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other influential figures in the history of African-American culture and politics. The collection begins with Henry Highland Garnet's 1843 "An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America," followed by Jermain Wesley Loguen's "I Am a Fugitive Slave," the famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech by Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass's immortal "What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" Subsequent orators include John Sweat Rock, John M. Langston, James T. Rapier, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Francis J. Grimké, Marcus Garvey, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s "I Have a Dream" speech appears here, along with Malcolm X's "The Ballot or The Bullet," Shirley Chisholm's "The Black Woman in Contemporary America," "The A Living Document" by Thurgood Marshall, and Barack Obama's "Knox College Commencement Address."

From Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Coming upon books that have been lying around our household for years, I get an education when I open them. This book was no exception--and yet, I am sad to read all the words that have been squandered on deaf ears. How contemporarily necessary, for today's audience, are Francis Grimke's words of 116 years ago, in his speech "Equality of Rights for All Citizens": "If justice sleeps in this land, let it not be because we have helped to lull it to sleep by our silence, our indifference; let it not be from lack of effort on our part to arouse it from its slumbers.""